Love Is Strange
by J.W.Melmoth
Summary: An AU where Adam might be too good to be true.


Kurt woke up with a smile on his lips, and stretched luxoriously. Saturday morning. No classes, and everything in the loft still quiet and peaceful. The perfect moment for some cuddling. With his eyes still closed, he slid his hand out over the mattrass. His smile faded a little when all he touched were cold sheets, but then he remembered: Adam's weekend job at the bakery required very early mornings. He opened his eyes and felt his heart swell. Adam had left his beanie on the pillow. Kurt reached for it and pressed it to the side of his face, breathing in the scent of his boyfriend and closing his eyes again as he thought of the wonderful night they had spent together.

The day before, after dance class with Ms July, Kurt had stayed in the dance room to practise some more. Though he had started NYADA half a year later than his peers, the choreographed routines and the streching exercises were no problem (and, after training with Coach Sylvester, neither were Ms July's taunts. Kurt had definitely heard worse). But his weakness, as she had so publicly pointed out during class that day, was improvisation. When put on the spot without rehearsed steps, Kurt always ended up falling back into his shoulder shimmy and jazz hands. Improv was an important part of Broadway preparation, Ms July told them. You'd need a few spontaneous moves up your sleeve in case you had a black-out on stage or the orchestra messed up. The worst thing would be to just stand there and do nothing. So, Ms July sprung improvs on them out of nowhere like pop quizzes, suddenly changing the music and pointing at someone with her stick and going: "You! Dance!"

Kurt had put his ipod on random and was trying to come up with new combinations and steps to match the music. His music collection was very ecclectic- from classical to modern, Lady Gaga to the Beatles (and even some Mellencamp for when he missed his dad). And, of course, the soundtracks to his favorite films and musicals. It was more fun than he expected; every once in a while a song would come on that they had covered in Glee club and it brought back many treasured memories (as well as some of Mike's dance lessons). He had already been at it for quite some time. Kurt yawned and rolled his shoulders. It had gotten dark already. Just how long had he been here? Maybe just one more, and then he'd pack up his things and go home.

Kurt grinned as an iconic song started playing. His feet automatically started dancing the mambo and he held out his arms to an imaginary dance partner. "This is _my _dance space, that is _your _dance space," he whispered coyly, grinning to himself, his eyes closed as he thought about Patrick Swayze's bare arms.

He was halfway through the song when he suddenly danced straight into something solid. Or rather, it danced into him. Kurt tore open his eyes and looked straight into the smiling face of his boyfriend, looking the part with a muscle shirt and his dance slacks on, clearly straight from a dance class himself. Adam tried to capture him in his arms, but Kurt twirled away playfully. They had watched Dirty Dancing together only a few weeks ago, so Adam knew what to do. He dropped to the floor in a dramatic pose and called out: "How do you call your lover boy?"

"Come here, lover boy!" Kurt laughed and wiggled his finger at Adam, making one of those faces that has once amused Blaine (Adam had assured him that they were, in fact, quite sexy and Blaine had been crazy to say otherwise).

"And if he doesn't answer?" Adam mimicked to the music.

"Oh, lover boy…" Kurt trailed off seductively in a sing-song voice, adding a few more turns to his steps.

"And if he _still_ doesn't answer?" Adam asked, getting up on his hands and knees.

"I simply say-" Kurt declared, approaching Adam with a shoulder shimmy (he couldn't help himself, it just felt good), "baby…oooh baby…my sweet baby-" He got down on his hands and knees as well and crawled towards Adam. "You're the one."

They didn't finish singing the song - long before Sylvia and Mickey were done, Kurt and Adam were glued together from their thighs to their lips, desperately clinging together and clawing at each other's shirts while they kissed. "Your place?" Adam suggested breathlessly as Kurt's fingers dug hard into his biceps.

"Mmm," Kurt replied, and only very reluctantly let go. He glanced at his own flushed face in one of the mirrors and whished they could stay right there and have sex on the floor (or maybe up against one of the mirrors), filling the large room with echoes of their pleasure. But it was too dangerous. He could not risk expulsion, not now that he had finally been accepted to the school of his dreams.

They somehow made it home and into his bed without getting arrested for public indecency, and it didn't take long for Adam to make Kurt forget everything around him and yell out his name, privacy curtains be damned. The response was almost immediate.

"Oh my god, Kurt, keep it down!" Rachel called out from the other side of the loft. "I really don't need to hear what you're doing in there!"

Kurt smothered his laughter against Adam's chest and lifted his hips higher, not bothered in the least by Rachel's discomfort. She could just put on his white noise machine if she really minded, like he had done every time Brody was over.

* * *

><p>Things fell apart a few weeks later, on the marble staircase of Dalton Academy.<p>

"Kurt, will you marry me?"

Kurt stared at Blaine in disbelief. "No, of course not," he said. "We're not even together, and I have a boyfriend in New York."

Everyone around them gasped and started talking among themselves. Blaine looked crestfallen and surprised. Kurt looked around at his friends for help, but Rachel and Santana were both looking at him as if he had just declared himself emperor of the moon. Kurt shrugged helplessly, and the girls swooped in, tearing him away from Blaine and the music choirs' prying eyes and into a Dalton classroom.

"What is wrong with you?" Rachel asked urgently. "Kurt, I understand the pressure of such a moment, honestly I do, but why would you lie to Blaine like that?"

"Yeah," Santana added, "it's not like it's a secret that you've been pining away without him, popping pills to get to sleep every night. God knows why, because why would you even miss a guy who picks a suit the colour of baby poo-"

"Santana, that's enough," Rachel cut her off. "Kurt?"

Kurt looked at them both. Why weren't they on his side? "What do you mean?" he asked. "I'm not pining! I am with Adam. You know that. He's everything I ever wanted in a boyfriend. Why on earth would I choose Blaine over him?"

Rachel and Santana exchanged worried looks. "Who?" Rachel finally asked.

Kurt frowned. "Adam! Adam Crawford. The guy who stays over at our loft all the time. You know, wears beanies, bakes cookies…"

"Oh _Kurt_," Rachel said, suddenly looking sympathetic and sad. She put a hand on his arm and rubbed it. "It's okay. I understand. I just didn't know it was this bad. You should have told us…"

Kurt shook her off. "What? _What_?"

Rachel looked at Santana. She shrugged, and Rachel made a determined face. "Kurt. I don't know how to break this to you, but… Adam's not real."

Kurt blinked. "Huh?_ Of course he's real. _Have you all gone crazy?"

"Says the guy who gets up in the middle of the night to bake cookies," Santana replied.

"Honey, it's okay," Rachel continued stoically, pretending Santana hadn't said anything. "We know you've been under a lot of stress with catching up on your NYADA classes and your dad getting sick…" She started petting his arm again.

"No, wait," Kurt interjected, and turned to Santana. "You… you saw him. You talked to him! When he stayed over during the snowstorm! He was there all weekend!"

"What snowstorm?" Santana replied. "Oh? You mean that bit of weather right after Valentines' Day? That hardly lasted a day, and you slept through most of that."

Kurt turned to Rachel. "You heard us have sex! I called out his name!"

Rachel blushed. "I assumed you were fantasizing about that American Idols guy again."

Kurt felt like someone had pulled the rug from under his feet. "But…he even left his hats at our place…" he said quietly, thinking of all the times he had cleaned up after Adam. He really did seem to forget his beanies a lot. He always suspected Adam did that on purpose so he'd have an excuse to come back.

"Kurt… _" _Rachel said gently, as if she was talking to a timid four year old,_"you're _the one who started wearing beanies. I didn't want to say anything because, well, your fashion choices have always been a bit…_out there _and I figured it might be something you picked up at Vogue-"

"But they look like you're wearing a pancake on your head," Santana added. "Here, I have proof." She pulled out her phone and quickly scrolled through her pictures until she found what she was looking for. She held out the phone to Kurt.

Kurt took it hesitantly and felt his stomach drop. She was right. It was a picture of him, taken at NYADA one week ago. He looked tired, his hair flattened under a knitted hat, and he was wearing a flannel shirt over a tshirt. Very unflattering. "No," he said softly. "No. No, no- this is not…" He began to panic a little. How could someone so real not exist? He saw him almost every night; they had touched, kissed…

Kurt quickly took out his own phone. "I have proof too!" he exclaimed. He had texts- he and Adam exchanged texts all the time on the nights they didn't spend together. And emails! He looked at his texts. Rachel, Mercedes, Mercedes, his dad, Finn, Rachel… where were Adam's texts? Did he delete them to save memory space on his phone? He opened his email program. He wouldn't have deleted his emails.

Nothing. Not a single mail from Adam Crawford. But what he did see was…invoices. Receipts. Order confirmation emails from online stores. Dozens of them. With shaking fingers, he opened one. It was from his amazon account._'_Dear Kurt Hummel, thank you for ordering_ English Muffins & Scones_.' He opened another. _The Chocolate Chip Anthology; the Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Pastry._ Another. _Jamie Oliver's Cookie Recipes._ He could not remember ordering any of those! (but he could remember eating Adam's perfect haselnut cookies). Another string of mails were from an online apothecary. Ambien prescription renewals, with a friendly reminder to mind the package insert for information on side-effects.

Side-effects.

Kurt swallowed and opened a Google search. _The side-effects of long-term use of Ambien. Confusion about identity, place and time. Seeing, hearing or feeling things that are not there. Delusions. Dementia. _

His mind scanned over all the times he had seen Adam since they started dating. Had all of that been a dream? A fantasy? And if that wasn't real, what else had he been making up?

Kurt paled. It was too much. To distract himself, he returned to his emails. There was also a confirmation from a webshop with a very unambiguous name, clearly adults-only. He turned away from the girls and opened it. Apparently, he had bought himself a boyfriend pillow. And a boyfriend _penis_._Oh god_, Kurt realised. _I ordered a dildo online without knowing it?_ He scanned down the order. At least his Ambien-addled mind had remembered that he liked to switch, and had ordered him a fleshjack too. _And I have been using them while hallucinating about a guy who doesn't exist…_

"I feel sick," he whispered. "I want to go home." He looked at Rachel and Santana. Now was not the time to have a breakdown. There were 4 school choirs outside waiting for an explanation. Kurt put on a strong face and went into damage-control mode. "Please don't tell Blaine or the others," he said. "Even without Ad-…without the Ambien, my answer to him would have been the same."

Rachel and Santana nodded. Kurt left Ohio as soon as he could, giving only minimal explanations to his family and friends. Most of them blamed Blaine for putting Kurt on the spot, and told him to take a few weeks to let it all sink in.

* * *

><p>Back in New York, Kurt took all the remaining Ambien and flushed it down the toilet. Then he cleaned out his closet, putting away all the strange items of clothing he had acquired (and worn, apparently. How embarrassing! It was a wonder Isabelle didn't fire him) to donate them to charity. He also sorted his new cookbooks. He would keep those - imaginary boyfriend or not, there would always be an occasion for baking. The items in the suitcase under his bed… he'd keep those too, for a while. After that, he felt a little better. But it still felt like a break-up somehow. Having to live without Adam from now on felt like the start of autumn after summer.<p>

Kurt made his way down the hall at NYADA after his theatre introductions class, both eyes on his phone. Mercedes had been bombarding him with texts asking all about his 'secret NY boyfriend' and Finn was demanding to 'meet his new bro'. Kurt couldn't decide what to tell them. He turned a corner and accidentally knocked the books out of someone's hands with his shoulder bag. He quickly lowered his phone and dropped to his knees to help them gather the books. "I am so sorry, I should really know better than to text and walk at the same time, here, I'll help-"

"It's quite alright, Kurt."

The voice made Kurt freeze. He sounded…exactly like Adam. Kurt looked up. The man he had run into looked exactly like Adam, too. "You know who I am?" Kurt asked hesitantly, handing him his books.

Adam smiled bashfully. "Of course I do. You're Kurt Hummel. We've…um. We've met, actually. You probably don't remember. It was a couple of weeks ago, you were standing by the extracurricular sign-up sheets? I'm Adam. I invited you to the Adam's Apples rehearsal. You said yes, but- you never came. Maybe you forgot. I figured it was just a polite way of telling me to bugger off. I did kind of go overboard with the fanboying. You must get that all the time."

Kurt stared at him for a moment. Could it be? Had the hallucinations actually started _after_ he had met Adam in real life? Or was this another mirage, a trick of his memory, triggered by residual Ambien and wishful thinking? He looked around and grabbed the arm of a girl passing by. "Can you see him?" he asked urgently, nodding at Adam.

"What? Of course I can. I'm not blind," the girl snapped, rolled her eyes at him and pulled her arm free.

Adam narrowed his eyes a little and gave Kurt a questioning look.

"Sorry about that," Kurt said quickly. "I was just…checking something." He smiled at Adam, feeling a little giddy. "_Adam_. Of course. I didn't forget. I've been thinking about you. A lot. More than you'd believe."

Adam raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Kurt quickly continued. "I had to go back to Ohio for a bit, my dad was sick and my old Glee club was competing at Nationals, and my ex-boyfriend…it was all kind of-" He waved his hand dismissively. "But that's all over now, and I would really like to come and see you rehearse."

"Really?" Adam said with surprise, his face lighting up. He looked like he couldn't believe his luck.

"Yes, really," Kurt assured him.

"Um. Well. Our next rehearsal is tomorrow afternoon. I, uh… I can't wait!"

"Great! Me neither."

They stood and looked at each other for a moment. Then they both spoke at the same time.

"Would you like to go have a coffee?"

"Could you possibly imagine having drinks some time?"

"Absolutely!"

"Yes."

Kurt and Adam laughed. Kurt felt warm all over. Suddenly he felt like he didn't want to waste another moment. "Let's go then. I know a place that makes muffins that are almost as good as mine."

"Right now?" Adam asked, looking surprised. He looked at his watch and then over Kurt's shoulder.

Kurt felt his confidence dwindle. "Unless…you're busy?" he asked.

Adam quickly shook his head. "No, just…give me one second," he said breathlessly, put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled. Two girls standing in front of a classroom a small distance away from them looked up and, upon recognising him, one of them tapped her watch. Adam gave them an apologetic shrug and nodded his head at Kurt. Kurt turned to face them and watched their jaws drop. "O.M.G!" mouthed one of them. The other just beamed and gave Adam two thumbs up. Adam blushed, visibly pleased.

"Who are they?" Kurt asked.

"The heart and soul of the Adam's Apples," Adam said fondly. "You'll meet them tomorrow. But it appears we already have their blessing."

Kurt smiled and took Adam's hand. "Good. Let's go then. We have weeks to catch up on."


End file.
